by Hugo Huesca
“Relationships take time and trust to build,” began Doyle with a completely different tone than the patronizing one he had used before. More patient. He was trying to do a bad cop, good cop routine on me, without bothering to use different people to play the part. “We’ve all done things we regret in the past, Dorsett. But it’s not every day we have the chance to fix our mistakes.”
“What do you want?” I cut him off.
“Told you to just tell him,” interjected Martinez.
Doyle’s eye twitched. “That’s what I was getting at. We’ve been helping you even when we had no reason to, Dorsett. Giving you this safe house, checking the streets for anyone with a biological weapon or a bomb. We’d like to offer you the chance to pay that favor back to us. To build trust.”
I turned to Martinez. “What do you want?” I repeated.
“The FBI is investigating an organization,” she said. “They’ve somewhat of an… interest in you. A strange obsession, one could say.”
“I was getting to that,” said Doyle, seeming like his feelings were hurt.
There were a lot of organizations interested in me if the emails I’d been getting were any indication. Most were not real. Others were, but they were thankfully either from out of the States or kept in check by the CIA and the police.
If the FBI was involved, this meant said organization was real. And dangerous.
“We want to investigate them, but we haven’t been able to get much out of their members. It’s very tight. We have reasons to believe we’re working against the clock on this one, so we had to get crafty.”
“You want to use me as bait,” I said. The way they shuffled around awkwardly confirmed it.
“That’s one way of putting it,” began Doyle, but he trailed off.
Martinez was more direct. “Yeah, we have to use you as bait. This is not a normal situation, see. Technically, they haven’t done anything illegal.”
“But they might,” I said. She nodded.
I thought it over. Dangerous organization with a grudge against me. A bunch of drones circling the city. I could put two and two together.
I made myself no illusions that the FBI was doing this for me. They’d had no trouble with the drones before. Something had changed.
“I’m in,” I said. The sudden response caught Doyle by surprise, but not Martinez.
“This may be dangerous,” she said.
“I’m already in danger,” I said. “The FBI may have their own reasons to catch this organization of yours, but I have mine. I want to keep all the people that want to blow up my family as far away from us as possible.”
Our interests were aligned.
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“What do you want me to do?”
They smiled and I instantly rethought the alignment part.
“Bait is one way of putting it,” Doyle said. “You’ll go out there, get their attention, see what they do once they get close. We’ll be waiting for them.”
It was my turn to nod. Van once said that the person playing bait hogged all the glory. After all, in Rune, standing in the middle of the action made a much better video than waiting for an hour in a cramped hiding spot.
But you didn’t respawn in real life.
“What organization is this?” I asked.
“You’ve heard of them before, I’d wager,” said Martinez. She took a wrinkled paper out of her back pocket and handed it to me. It was a pamphlet. It had an amateurish drawing of a kid standing atop planet Earth and looking up to the sky, arms raised. The kid had a friendly smile. The pamphlet’s title was: “A message of peace and harmony from across the stars.”
I looked up towards Martinez and Doyle. I was confused. “This is just publicity from the Church of the Intangible Lord.”
CHAPTER SIX
Reinforcements
It made no sense. The Church of the Intangible Lord was a tiny cult. They had been around for several years. What the hell did they want with me? I wasn’t even sure they could afford high-tech surveillance drones like the ones roaming the streets.
“What do you know about them?” asked Doyle.
“What everyone else knows,” I told them. Then, I frowned. “Is this a tax evasion thing? Because if you want me to risk my life because a cult isn’t paying taxes…”
“Tax evasion is in the lower end of our worries regarding the Intangible Lord’s membership,” said Doyle. “But it’s in there somewhere.”
“It’s just a cult… Isn’t it?”
Martinez shook her head, but without much conviction. Like she wasn’t sure herself. “Small, religious organizations have been, historically, a great smokescreen for other operations,” she explained. “Guerrillas, money laundering, or just a psychopath with a love for cyanide that somehow slipped through the cracks in the system.”
“The Intangible Lord’s membership never gave us much trouble when it was first created,” said Doyle. “Same neo-new-wave stuff you see every day. God was an alien. A spaceship will come to bring the faithful to heaven if they buy the Church’s merchandise. A couple dozen free clinics around the States so they can masquerade as a charity. Never more than a couple hundred people associated with them. Until the Event…”
I winced. New Age alien-based religions were all the rage a generation ago. With the notice that alien civilizations existed and were out there, those religions had come back packing a punch.
Eternal salvation for just the small cost of a monthly membership…
“What about them worries you?” I asked. I now knew why they were interested in me. The Event had changed the world, and in their eyes, validated their beliefs. If real extraterrestrial life was out there, and they were smart enough to create something as advanced as the Rune Signal, why couldn’t their own gods exist?
I was the one that started the Event. If the Intangible Lord’s crew wanted me, it was either as prophet or martyr.
Doyle answered before Martinez had the chance. “This is something out of your level of clearance, Dorsett. But I’ll give you the basics, because I meant it when I said the thing about trust and relationships.
“This cult has had dealings with some… unsavory people in the last year. People we’ve dealt before in the past. We’ve reason to believe the cult is going to get very radical fairly soon, and they’re getting ready to raise hell in San Mabrada.”
Martinez gave a grim frown. “If we did this by the book, waited to get enough evidence to audit them as deeply as we need to, it may be already too late. With the state of the world’s affairs, I don’t think the States can’t afford a religious-fueled guerrilla group running rampant.”
“Damn.”
“Like Kris said before, this is going to be dangerous,” Doyle said. “Last chance to walk away.”
“I’m still in,” I told them. “But I do have some requests.”
“Let’s hear them,” said Doyle.
I took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “I want a raise to our living allowance. Nothing fancy, but you should have realized by now we’re dipping into my sister’s streaming money to complete what you give us.”
“Her stream is getting good,” commented Martinez. “I’m curious to find out where the thing with the raptor goes.”
“The FBI is on a tight budget ourselves,” said Doyle. “But we can pass it up as operational costs of the Intangible Situation. I’ll see to it. Anything else?”
“Yes, actually,” I said. This one was the important part, the request that would make or break the deal. “You inform my family about what’s going on. No lying to those two. I’m saying this because I suspect the ‘you can’t tell anyone about this, not even your mother or sister,’ is coming up any time. Cut it. There’s no risk they can filter the information on accident while you’re watching them, is it?”
Martinez and Doyle glanced at each other, once again exchanging information without a word, the clear sign of a team that had been in the field for a very long tim
e. Doyle shook his head slightly. Martinez frowned. The man’s nostrils flared up in indignation. The woman’s eyebrows raised.
Finally, it was Doyle who conceded the ground. “We won’t tell them everything,” he said, “but we’ll make sure they get the gist of it.”
“Good,” I told them. I realized I had been holding my breath, so I relaxed. “When do we start?”
“We ride at night,” said Martinez. “The Church has an evening service, so we’ll catch them en masse. Your part will be simple. You walk in. They try to grab you. We enter and arrest them all.”
“What if they just shoot me?”
“You’ll have a bulletproof vest,” said Doyle. “We don’t think they’ll do that, though. If they wanted to shoot you, their drones would be armed with lethal weapons, don’t you think?”
It made sense, and still did little to make me feel better. When someone starts a phrase with, “We don’t think they’ll shoot you,” you know you’re in trouble.
I’ll have to go back to Caputi’s spy tomorrow, I thought.
“Let’s do it,” I told them. I pointed over to the other housing unit. “If we go at night, I want to debrief my family right now.”
“Debrief?” Martinez smiled playfully. “Interesting way of saying it. Are you contemplating working full-time for us feds, Cole?”
I felt a hot coil of shame heating up my face. I wasn’t trying to come across as a wanna-be military tough guy. It was merely Rune talk. Spend long enough playing a hobby and some of the lingo is going to rub on you.
“Not at all,” I told her.
The agents and I left their hideout and I entered the safe house while they waited outside.
“Mom? Van?” Both of them were inside my sister’s bedroom. Mom had my mindjack in her hands and had gone pale.
Of course, I thought. Van already told her about today.
Mom turned to face me. “You’ll get yourself killed.” She wasn’t even angry. Just scared. My heart sank. “You’re not a superhero, Cole. Bullets can k… hurt you just like anyone else.”
Van was just logging out of her own mindjack. She shrugged in my direction, like telling me, “It went how we expected it to go.”
I bit my lip. No lying. Lay the cards straight on the table, Cole.
“I just talked to the FBI outside,” I told her. “They think I can work with them to catch the people chasing after me. I’m going to help them. Tonight.”
This was news to them both. “You were gone like ten minutes!” said Van.
“Have you gone mad? Have they gone mad? You’re just a kid…” Mom looked like she was about to go out and give Doyle and Martinez a piece of her mind. As entertaining as the thought was, I couldn’t let her do that.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” I reminded her. “I’m eighteen. Old enough to make my old decisions.”
“You’re obviously not mature enough if you think you’re invulnerable—!”
“I don’t think like that at all,” I told her. “I just can’t sit here while we’re hunted down like rabbits. While people we don’t know decide whether we live or die.”
She winced at this. She was probably remembering the months I’d spent in jail. She was in another prison during that time, as she wasn’t in death row. But it hadn’t been pretty.
“Can anyone else do this? Anyone at all?”
“Why should they care?” I almost bit my tongue as a flare of the old cynicism threatened to raise its ugly head again. I forced myself to shut off that part of me. I knew people that cared. I knew that. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. “I’m not willing to risk those people. Don’t ask me to do that.”
Her breathing was shallow. “I don’t approve of this, Cole.”
I nodded. “You don’t have to approve. I’m just asking that you listen. Agent Martinez and Agent Doyle are outside the apartment and they have agreed to fill you in on the operation. You’ll see there’s not much danger involved, and we get to take a weight out off our shoulders. We can’t live in this bunker forever, Mom.”
For all my talking, the only part she heard was that the agents were outside. “Well, if they think they can just recruit my son and have me just stand by like an old home appliance, they’re going to hear what I have to say about it.”
She stood up and left the room in a hurry. The screaming began shortly thereafter.
“You’re not going to help them?” Van asked me.
“Strategy,” I told her. “By tactically allowing Mom to tire herself out on them, I can swoop in after she has calmed down.”
“Their brave sacrifice will be remembered,” Van muttered, although her laugh was a bit forced.
A heavy silence fell between us, broken only by Mom’s creative insults.
“Shit has gotten pretty insane, hasn’t it?” Van said during a pause in the screaming.
“It’ll take a bit more for people to calm down,” I told her.
“I’m talking about us. The Dorsett household.”
I caught her meaning. I nodded. “Things are improving, aren’t they? In a weird, crab-like way of moving forward. At least, some things.”
“I guess they are.” She had to change the subject. “Have you heard anything at all about Irene?”
“No,” I said. A pang of sadness and fear nabbed at my mind, but I had to ignore it for now. Irene was alive and well. I had to believe she had a good reason not to contact me. “She’s probably doing the same we are, I guess. Surviving. Trying to weather the storm.”
Another bout of silence. Van had an artificial window in her bedroom, too. It was overlooking the Eiffel Tower.
“You really believe we aren’t doomed to intergalactic war?” She had never asked this before. She, like almost everyone else, tried to pretend that the Event wasn’t something that would transform society as we knew it in our lifetimes. It was easier this way.
“We’ve lived this long,” I said. “Without reducing the planet to a radioactive slug of glass. And even if they aren’t as friendly as we’d like… well, Rune is still our only way of approaching each other. At most we’ll get a new expansion. Intergalactic Warfare.”
She smiled at this. “I’d become a millionaire streaming something like that.”
Mom finally stopped her yelling. We left the bedroom and found her sitting by the living room’s table. She was still very pale and looked incredibly frail. But her eyes weren’t frail. When she looked at me, there was steel in her gaze.
“Perhaps I’d have done the same thing if I were in your place twenty years ago. You’ll understand one day, if you have children…” She gathered her breath, like the next part would need all her strength.
“Help the FBI,” she told me with a whisper. “And come back safe. Because, so help me God, I’ll kill you if something bad happens to you.”
I hadn’t expected a reaction like that. Perhaps the FBI was more eloquent than I thought.
More likely, she had more in common with me and Van than we had given her credit for.
Fast forward an hour or two later. I’d sent a text a little after my talk with Mom and was now eagerly awaiting an answer.
We’ll need to talk in Rune, I’d wager. Be there in two hours. I’ll send you the coordinates. Don’t be a single minute late or shit will get dangerous. I’m in the middle of a sniper showdown, OK?
-W
I closed the message and nodded to myself. That was Walpurgis alright. Only as much information as needed over the telephone, and the rest could be discussed in Rune, where it would be harder to get our conversations snooped on. Not impossible, though. But Francis would see to that.
“I’m logging in again,” I told the FBI agents and my family, who were all sitting at the table as we went through the plan once again. It was very simple in theory. When evening came, I was going to get into a car and go to the Intangible Lord’s nearest church. This meant going to the Financial District. It was a populated area with a lot of people, which made things safer for me, according to Age
nt Doyle. When the members reacted to my presence, they would get arrested the very instant things turned illegal. In any case, I was going to have a bulletproof vest and other amenities. Just, you know. To be safe.
The agents, of course, refused to talk anything tactic-side with us civilians, so the conversation was getting a bit stale.
I pretended to be more bored than I was, and less terrified than I felt.
I trusted the agents to do their job, of course. But I trusted my friends more. Van’s advice was on point. If I was getting into an operation, I needed my trusted team covering my back. With Gabrijel in Russia and Irene gone dark, this meant Walpurgis.
She was probably enough to handle anything that could be thrown my way. There was this thing she had done to an entire squad of SWAT drones that I still hadn’t found a way to explain…
“You sure you don’t want to go over the plan again?” said Doyle.
“I think the seventh time was very illuminating,” I said with a tense smile. “If I stay here doing nothing, I’ll only get more nervous, so it will be best if I zone out a bit.”
Thankfully, the fact that one could scheme while playing a videogame wasn’t something that occurred to Agent Doyle. Martinez eyed me while keeping a poker face. She said nothing, though, so if she had any suspicions she kept them to herself.
Mom was about to complain, but Van must’ve kicked her under the table, because I heard a muffled thumb and saw Mom wince.
“I’ll be ready as soon as you need me,” I told the agents as I left for my room.
I logged back in to the Rune servers and appeared inside the Teddy, right where I’d left it an hour ago, in a private hangar of the Argus Space Station, the Terran Federation’s main base orbiting Earth.
“Back so soon, Master Cole?” asked Francis.
“Yeah,” I told him. “We’ve a meeting with a friend.”
You have gained a new Quest! Meet with Walpurgis and extract her before she either gets killed or blows up an entire ship. Reward: Battle spoils.